The Apprentice Pathhttp://www.theapprenticepath.com
Thoughts on how we teach and learn the craft of interaction designFri, 14 Oct 2016 03:46:25 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.1Balanced Craft at TalkUXhttp://www.theapprenticepath.com/balanced-craft-at-talkux/
Thu, 13 Oct 2016 21:00:45 +0000http://www.theapprenticepath.com/?p=1634Continue reading Balanced Craft at TalkUX]]>Ladies That UX invited me to be the closing speaker at TalkUX 2016. As I transition from UX practitioner to entrepreneur, I am glad to share back what I’m learning with my communities. Hopefully I’ll inspire other UX designers to take the plunge!

In this short video, I explain why I’m excited about what we’re doing at Brooklyn Copper Cookware, and why I think TalkUX is such an important event.

This talk was a new direction for me. Instead of talking “to” founders about what they should do, I’m now able to speak “with” founders and share my own direct experience. In this talk I discuss a common error of perspective founders can succumb to, illustrated with examples from my own company, Brooklyn Copper Cookware.

]]>Balanced Crafthttp://www.theapprenticepath.com/balanced-craft/
Sun, 14 Jun 2015 20:39:46 +0000http://www.theapprenticepath.com/?p=1577Continue reading Balanced Craft]]>How can we shape our skillsets to be effective participants in Balanced Teams? Complex software projects require a wide range of skills. As an individual who seeks meaningful work, you understand the need for cross-team communication and collaboration, but the skillset is overwhelming. What do you need to know? How deeply must you know it?

Are you a UX practitioner? Are you ready to deepen your knowledge? Here’s a list of books to inspire you to branch out and read something outside your usual comfort zone. Some classics, some new titles, all worth reading!

]]>Structured UX Design Critiquehttp://www.theapprenticepath.com/ux-design-critique/
Tue, 13 Jan 2015 14:00:25 +0000http://www.theapprenticepath.com/?p=1468Continue reading Structured UX Design Critique]]>I was invited to speak at the Downtown LA UX Study Group on the topic of UX Design Critique. You can look at the slides here, or download the deck from SlideShare.

]]>Make an animated GIF with Keynote and Photoshophttp://www.theapprenticepath.com/keynote-animated-gif/
Mon, 15 Dec 2014 03:01:45 +0000http://www.theapprenticepath.com/?p=1424Continue reading Make an animated GIF with Keynote and Photoshop]]>I enjoy the InVision newsletter because it includes great interviews with designers and useful tips, like this article from Andy Orsow called 7 tips for designing awesome animated GIFs.

I learned how to make animated GIFs with Photoshop at Shillington, but found the process unwieldy. I didn’t realize you could give yourself a huge head start by doing your animations as a video first. I didn’t have ScreenFlow or After Effects, so I was intrigued by Andy’s suggestion that I could use something considerably more low-tech (and probably already on YOUR computer too.)

Pro tip: If ScreenFlow or After Effects aren’t in your budget, create your animation in Keynote, and export it as a video. Yep, there’s finally a use for that setting. —@andyorsow

Here is the result of my little experiment. I made this animated GIF with Keynote and Photoshop. It was a pretty straightforward process and it was a fun way to learn something new. If you want to try it out yourself, please read on for a few more tips you might find helpful.

Set up your Keynote workspace

You can change the size of the “canvas” in Keynote by setting the slide size in the inspector. I choose 600×200 because that’s the width of graphics for my blog. You can pick any size that makes sense for your project.

Turn on the rulers and drag some guides so you can orient yourself as you’re working.

Create your animation in Keynote

The Keynote animation settings are a little fussy to get used to but there’s a lot already built in. Everything you’ll need us under the “Build” tab of the inspector. You “group” actions by using the “Start Build” drop down, which allows you to run actions at the same time. For example, the circle rotates and moves at the same time, that’s TWO actions)

Export to Quicktime

When you’re ready, export the file to Quicktime format. I only had one slide in my deck with the animation, so I kept all the defaults (Playback Uses: Manual Advance), 24 frames per second. I just turned off Audio (not sure that was actually necessary)

Finish it up in Photoshop

Importing the .mov file into Photoshop was pretty straightforward. File > Import > Video Frames to Layers. As Andy suggested, I chose the option “Limit To Every 2 Frames”

Once I imported the file into Photoshop, I immediately tried to Save for Web, but the GIF didn’t animate. I wasn’t sure what was wrong so the second time I imported it, I opened the animation panel (Window > Animation) and verified the playback was working before I exported.

It was better to do it that way anyhow because I could tune the animation by extending time and removing frames. I found that I needed to extend the last frame to 1 second to make the animation look like there’s a little pause before it starts.

What will YOU make?

Please leave a comment if you found this helpful or leave a link to your animated GIF project. I’d love to hear from you.

Kate Rutter, Strategic Sketcher at Intelleto

Hand Lettering Ledger, Mary Kate McDevitt

Although you might think that hand-lettering is just the territory of graphic designers and illustrators, I think it’s great for any hand-sketcher to have a couple different hand-printed fonts in their toolkit. The book has great examples and loads of different worksheets, so buy it on paper and practice, practice, practice!

VizThink

Quick, Useful UI Sketches, Lane Halley (that’s me!)

I’ve pulled together my current thinking about UI sketching in a workshop. I use a technique I call “reverse wireframing” to teach you to see the structure of UIs and through a series of exercises, you’ll create your personal shorthand to draw UI elements.

Class materials

Class description

Are you challenged by unclear, conflicting and changeable product mandates? Frustrated by other team members who just don’t seem to “get it?” Do you struggle to find a sustainable pace where you can deliver what your team needs to move forward and still have a little time to think ahead?

The increasing popularity of Agile development and Lean Startup have created an expectation of shorter cycles and iterative delivery, yet our teams still ask for for pixel perfect deliverables. At the same time, we are asked to deliver great experiences, advocate for the business value of good design and facilitate a more inclusive ux process with our teams.

This presents us with an interesting set of challenges. How can we develop and support a shared vision while moving forward in small, validated steps? How can we find the right level of fidelity for the artifacts we create? How can we engage with the rest of the team without getting bogged down in “design by committee?”

I believe we can thrive and do good work in this environment of continual change if we reconsider our UX workflow as a framework of tools and activities that can adapt to the needs of our products and teams.

Attendees will learn how to:

Adapt familiar UX activities to be more quick, visual, collaborative and continuous

Diagnose when to apply different UX techniques

Help your team move away from opinion-based design

Create cooperative relationships with product managers and developers

Productively engage with team members who do not have a design background

]]>LeanUX14 Presentations and Speakershttp://www.theapprenticepath.com/leanux14/
Fri, 11 Apr 2014 17:01:09 +0000http://www.theapprenticepath.com/?p=1293Continue reading LeanUX14 Presentations and Speakers]]>I attended Lean UX 2014 in New Jersey April 10-12, 2014. Below, please find the schedule with with links to the videos, slides, materials and information about the speakers. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, please check back later. I am adding links as I can find them and will continue to update this post. If you have found something I don’t have yet, please feel free to add missing info in the comments – thanks!

UPDATE April 28, 2014: Will has started to post the videos, I’m adding links here as they are added to the LeanUX site.